Using debris from B.C. beaches, Michael Campbell bundles and fashions salvaged materials – bits of driftwood, eroded iron, torn nets, rusty nails and spark plugs, two by fours, pieces of boat engines and fragments of wharves and crates – into little structures. For Field Recordings, he has grouped them into a Jules Verne-like flotilla of tiny vehicles and vessels. Despite such names as the The Janice May, The Alfred Drew and The Scott Alexander, the objects read like a post-apocalyptic fairytale. An assembly of metal pipes configuring the installation saves the whimsical pieces from precocity by introducing an interesting science lab sensibility.

Field Recordings of Icebergs Melting was previously shown in 2008 at DeLeon White Gallery, Toronto, and in 2009 at Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario as well as the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound. The exhibit title does not relate to the work other than that the materials were found “in the field” and have been suitably eroded by saltwater.

Michael Campbell lives and works in Lethbridge, where he teaches in the Faculty of Art at the University of Lethbridge. He also has a studio on Hornby Island with a view of passing tugboats, barges and oyster-hauling boats. Campbell received a BFA from the University of Toronto (1990) and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal (1993). His work has been shown in numerous public galleries across Canada and at Zurich International 2003.

Mia Johnson